This year’s 12th North American Conference on Multiphase Production Conference was held in Banff, Alberta, Canada, May 22-24, 2024, with Tulsa University Fluid Flow Project (TUFFP) as its sponsor. Multiphase flow conferences have been serving the petroleum engineering industry since 1983. It is one of the most educational, intellectually stimulating, and technically fulfilling conferences, with a diverse international delegation representing universities, international and national oil and gas operators, service and consulting companies, equipment manufacturers, and software developers.
This year, UTulsa’s own and industry legend, Jim Brill, Ph.D., the Jeffrey J. McDougall, Eminent Chair Professor in Petroleum Engineering, was chosen as a keynote speaker alongside UTulsa’s Cem Sarica, Ph.D., the Floyd M. Stevenson Distinguished Professor of Petroleum Engineering. Their keynote was titled “A Historical Perspective of Multiphase Flow and Tulsa University Fluid Flow Project’s Contributions,” celebrating the 50+ years of multiphase flow research at TUFFP, tracing its history back to its formation in 1973.
The keynote emphasized the sudden need for more accurate predictions after the industry began operating in more hostile environments like offshore and the Arctic. This was when experimental data gathering and mechanistic modeling of flow behavior became so important, along with investigating flow assurance issues like paraffin deposition and hydrate formation.
There was also special mention of the maturity and refinement from 2000 to now. This included the emergence of “unified” modeling, commercial software, transient modeling, and better understanding, through vastly improved instrumentation, of the interplay between flow assurance and multiphase flow. The keynote also touched on issues such as leak detection, carbon management, and flow studies with CO2 and impurities.